For sale

I had breakfast with Hannah, this morning. She's a second year law student at Manchester uni but she'd popped home for a couple of days. I'd said I'd run her to the station but we thought we'd have a bite to eat and a catch up first.

On Monday she did her first session at a legal advice centre, which I was keen to hear about. This has been set up to help people now that the Tories have stopped legal aid in so many vital domestic areas. I must say that when Hannah first told me about it, I had my doubts about it but, in fact, it's really well organised. Sponsored by some sizeable law firms and run by the university, law students do the leg work on the case but are supervised by a solicitor when giving advice.

Of course, it's brilliant that these law firms and the university have set this up to fill the gap due to the change in eligibility for legal aid and also wonderful that law students will give up their time to help. However, as things stand and from what Hannah's been told, this is the only such centre in the country. So, if you're suffering domestic abuse, having problems over child access or being made homeless elsewhere in the country, then God help you if you can't afford to pay a solicitor.

As seems to be so often the case when the Tories make these vicious, ideological changes to policy, a little reading around and listening to commentary by people who actually work in the frontline makes it clear that the savings - £350M in this case - are not really savings at all, as the cost to the state in abandoning those in need puts stresses on the benefit system, police, prisons, social services and so on. No wonder the Tories are so keen to demonise those who need support.

I was still fuming after I dropped Hannah off and I stopped to take this photo, thinking I could write a gentle (possible slightly humorous) blog about being tempted to buy things we don't need. But actually, this tractor being sold has - somewhat indirectly - led to my anger over the Post Office sale being re-stoked.

The shares were sold at 330p and, on Friday, hit 500p. Let's be clear about what that means: the Tories have taken something that belongs to me and you and not only sold it for a short term gain (and to suit their ideology) but also sold it off cheap.

Let's say you asked me to sell your car on your behalf and I sold it for £3,300. If the person I sold it to immediately sold it on for £5,000 wouldn't you wonder whether I'd been the best man for the job? Whether I'd actually known what the hell I was doing when it came to selling your car? If I'd had any appreciation of its actual value?

And by selling it cheap, those people and organisations with the cash to buy and sell shares, a minority, will have become even wealthier, whilst everybody loses a national asset. And the 'success' of this sale, by the Tories own legislation, means they can now sell more shares.

It's not often I quote Ed Miliband but I am reminded of what he said about the Tories at this year's conference: "strong at standing up to the weak, but weak at standing up to the strong". While Starbucks, Vodafone, Apple et al get away with literally billions in unpaid corporation tax, the Tories make their 'savings' by hitting the weak and defenceless. (Note that in one area covered by Manchester university's legal advice service, adult illiteracy runs at a reported 42%).

David Cameron lied when he said the NHS was safe in his hands, Michael Gove plays fast loose and, frankly, stupid with the education system, Osborn celebrates a (possible) return to growth despite the fact that it has been delayed by his policies, the government sells the nation's assets off cheap, prints money that benefits the already wealthy and never once looks to sanction the businesses that created this situation in the first place nor takes money from those who can afford to pay. Indeed, under this government, the higher rate of tax has dropped, for Christ's sake.

This is a government that has made changes driven by ideology that even Thatcher's governments would have balked at and certainly wouldn't have succeeded in implementing if they'd tried, although their privatisation of BT and British Gas at least served to illustrate the reasons why we'll all be miserable about our postal service soon enough.

God knows I try, albeit not always successfully, to keep my political feelings off Twitter - no one wants that much bile in their timeline - but today I'm angry. Angered by three years of mismanagement and spite by a political party that didn't even have a mandate to govern and that had to rely on the misguided support of the LibDems.

And the thing that saddens me the most right now is that this Labour parliamentary party presents the weakest opposition that I've seen in all the time I've been following politics. God knows what will happen in 2015.